Just-in-Time PM #21: Workflow Strategies

Now it’s time to look at the JIT Project Manager’s toolkit. How do we put these ideas into practice in our day to day work?

Through Workflow Strategies, a set of practical techniques for executing modern projects. Here is the full list, according to whether they work better for small or large-scale projects, and what kind of situation they are best suited for.

Capture

Organize

Share

Scale

Planning

Offloading

Tracking

Metadata

Linking

Searching

Adapting

Structuring

Small

Archipelago of Ideas

Color Commentary

Meta-Plan

Naming Conventions

Interlinking Notes

Advanced Search

Dial Down the Scope

Sentence Hacking

Large

Headings First

Status Summary

Temporary Tags

Tag Hierarchy

Table of Contents

Brainsweep

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Function Follows Form

We are now in the crucial execution stage, where all our previous efforts at capturing, summarizing, and organizing packets of knowledge will pay off. It is in this final stage that we see whether the intermediate packets we’ve created end up being valuable.

Execution is also the most ambiguous stage, because people’s individual circumstances tend to diverge quite a bit. Whether you are an accountant or an airline pilot makes a big difference when it comes to applying what you know.

That’s why Workflow Strategies are less of a process, and more like a toolkit. The 16 individual strategies are each designed for a particular situation or problem to be solved. In the same way that different tools in your tool chest are suited for different jobs.

These Workflow Strategies are designed to help us execute our projects more effectively. They are standardized procedures that help us move faster, save our progress, and produce work of higher quality. They rely on having clearly summarized packets of knowledge (through Progressive Summarization) organized according to actionability (with P.A.R.A.), allowing us to combine those packets into valuable deliverables right at the moment they’re needed.

Here are the 16 Workflow Strategies we’ll cover in this chapter:

Archipelago of Ideas

Headings First

Color Commentary

Status Summary

Meta-Plan

Temporary Tags

Naming Conventions

Tag Hierarchy

Interlinking Notes

Table of Contents

Advanced Search

Brainsweep

Dial Down the Scope

Context Switch

Sentence Hacking

Function Follows Form

In this article I’ll provide a brief overview of each strategy, with further guidelines and examples in the next article.

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